Me an my (non)god

Ok, so when I was debating equal marriage a while back, I said that I would deal with my views on religion. This could be a long post, and I have no intentions of keeping everyone happy. Abraham Lincoln, when he said that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, was very correct; and religion is one of those that stirs it up.

So, where am I with religion?

Even this isn’t a simple statement. I don’t know whether I am agnostic or atheist or other. I suppose on the most basic of definitions I am an atheist.

Do I believe in a god? Do I believe there is a single, overarching, omnipotent being that controls or judges us? No. And so to that extent I am atheist.

Do I believe the bible to be the word of god, to have been written at the time about the life of his son? Do I believe the world was made in seven days? No. And there is so much actual, hard, factual evidence to counter so many of the tenets upon which the bible relies

But I do believe in religion, in certain circumstances.

Not a religion. But religion in general. And I am reasonably educated in this. I went to Church of England schools; regularly attended church until I was confirmed and had a good knowledge of the bible. I also had a good religious education teacher, who ensured that we were informed about other faiths beyond Christianity. So I understand how religions work. And that is where I say I believe in these religions in certain circumstances.

Corinthians 13:13 – “And now abideth faith, hope charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity”.

These days charity is more often read as love. So faith, hope and love – the true holy trinity.

John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”. See, that word there again. Love.

Regardless of which religion you follow, which holy book you read, these basic, fundamental principles are the repeated, defining principles upon which all proper, true religions rely. Faith, hope and love.

Such overwhelming positivity. And that’s what religion is about – the positive effect that it should have on the life of its followers. Some people I know are so unbelievably happy living their life following those principles. It’s infectious. And that is a good thing. In their darkest of times religion gives them hope. It already gives them faith which is far more than I have. I find so much empirical evidence to disprove the notion of a god that they trump me in the faith department a million times over. Perhaps my faith is in my friends, family, community and wider humanity. Perhaps that’s far too humanistic.

People who try to twist religion and holy scripture to their own, negative point of view are not just bastardising the work itself, they are fundamentally undermining or abusing their own faith, hope and charity. This reared its head in the equal marriage debate; with people throwing Leviticus around left, right and centre. Essentially the justification for equal marriage is based upon faith, hope and love. Afterall, John doesn’t say “God so loved the World [except for the gays] that he gave his only begotten Son”.

So, we’ll look at the bible, because the theory from the bible can be extrapolated to most religions.

Is the bible the story of one man? Well, sort of. You have the ‘prequel’ if you like – the Old Testament – which talks you through his heritage; then the main section – the story of his life; and finally the prologue – what his followers did next.

But (in my opinion) it is just that – a story. A very well-meaning story, with many positive teachings and morals to take away from it. Just as Jesus tells stories and parables to example the point he is trying to make, so the bible does the same many times over. It created the story-within-a-story format. Afterall, as I have already said, so much of it has been fundamentally and factually disproved.

Now, we know that it wasn’t written “at the time”. I has been created and added to all the way from the Council of Jamnia in 90AD to the Synod of Hippo in 393AD, to the Council of Trent in 1545-63 to the King James’ version which a couple of years ago celebrated 600 years since completion in 1611. Even today there is no single version, and so relying on a nuanced interpretation of a single word is problematic at best. Indeed, look at the transition from ‘charity’ to ‘love’.

It is the fundamental principles that should be relied up – the morals of the parables, the lessons from the sermons, the three basic tenets of faith, hope and love. If you follow these, rather than an absolutely literal interpretation then you should have a happy, positive interaction with, faith in, and reliance upon your religion.

And the context needs to be considered as well. When you consider that the writing of the books took place initially almost 2000 years ago in a very different society, both technically and geographically, to where we are, then it is no surprise that some of the phrases jar a bit as out of date. The most common translation used today (certainly in the UK) – the King James’ Version – was, as I said, translated 600 years ago. Again, in very different times.

So whilst the anti-equal campaigners were ignoring the overarching aims of faith, hope and charity; and concentrating on just one of the 95 or so books, gospels, letters or Epistles they ignore that it was clearly written by someone who was trying to address specific problems presented at the time (context) and the language used. The word ‘man’ was frequently deployed simply to refer to mankind as a whole, so don’t think it specifically refers to other males.

So, if you are drawing positivity, then your faith is good and true for you and good with me. The moment you take phrases out of context, abusing them to support a bigoted point of view, or in any other way negativing (it’s a word) a phrase, ideology, individual or community; then you are fundamentally denying your own religion, your own faith, hope and charity.

I tried to explain my position – that of not believing in a god, nor having faith myself, but understanding and respecting those who do – to a friend of mine. For someone who normally displays substantial intelligence, he was remarkably stupid and ignorant to the point of rude. I was wrong – religion was wrong; it was a terrible thing; fundamentally flawed and the root of all evil. There was no explanation as to why, it just was.

One of the circumstances where this is particularly abused is by some radical, fundamentalist Muslims. They use the term Jihad as a reason to take arms. On an absolute literal reading they may well be correct; but on a proper interpretation the Jihad is a war of conversion – it is a conversation, a discussion, not a physical attack.

I hate the phrase fundamentalist Muslim or extremist Muslims. It’s being bandied round far too much at the moment with the terriblyshocking murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich. The suspects have been referred to as radical Muslims or Muslim extremists in some of the media. Proper, true Muslim groups have been working damned hard to distance themselves from this; to condemn in the strongest terms what happened; to rebuild relationships within the community. The fact of the matter is that whatever the suspects may think, they were not doing this in the name of Islam; they were doing it for their own, shockingly misguided reason. It bears nothing to do with Islam and so the use of ‘Muslim’ in any tag attached to those suspects must be dropped. Extremists is fine, it needs no ‘enhancement’ and Muslims do not deserve to be so ignorantly demonised.

Well, I appear to have been remarkably concise on that, which surprised even me.